Working out of a cramped studio in his Houston Heights garage, artist Chris Hedrick spends his days creating magic out of wood.

After earning a BFA, Chris enjoyed a 25 year career as an illustrator and graphic designer in the energy industry. During that time, he produced volumes of personal artwork in a variety of media - painting, drawing, sculpture. In 2007 he set off to pursue his own artwork full-time. He is currently focused on working in wood.

Hedrick's work in wood has come in distinct phases. First with a series of small, fanciful objects carved from colorful hardwoods - ice cream cones, steaks, hammers, snakes. Then as a humorous series of 'failed' tools. Hedrick used rusty, discarded tool heads and attached them to a variety of elaborately twisted, floppy, and unworkable handles all carved from Hedrick's equally twisted imagination.

His latest series of carvings is more austere, all carved from single blocks of Alaskan Yellow Cedar or Linden. These life-sized carvings of everyday objects, mainly clothing, look so real they push the boundary of realism into full-on, head-trippy illusion. Hedrick gives a nod to classicism with draped fabrics but also peeks into our personal lives with a rumpled tie or cast-off loafers and socks - we know these moments. An Easter dress, long out-grown, but a memory too cherished to take off the hanger. A boy's first suit, worn once.

More recently, he is using the same techniques to investigate arrangements of twisted and stretched fabrics. Whatever Hedrick is working on, you can feel his full attention - and with that - he captures ours.